


The Panther Queen

by JaneTurenne



Category: Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 02:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneTurenne/pseuds/JaneTurenne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day Romana takes off her Presidential robes, she puts on a love song instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Panther Queen

The silver strands twine over and under and around, but the pattern of their decoration is anything but random. Stitch by syllable, they spell out a poem in Gallifreyan. It is a song of passion, consuming but never-spoken, painful and universe-lighting and perpetually unfulfilled--suppressed until the hour when, like birds, it could take wing and live, as it was always meant to do.

The dress arrives in a box with no note and no sender, and spends a month being poked and prodded by the CIA and the Chancellery before it is reluctantly delivered to the Lady President. She does not so much as allow herself to try it on, not once. Not, that is, until the day she gives up politics--when she hands over the Rod and the Sash and the Coronet. She walks quietly, alone, to her own room in her own TARDIS. She lifts the lid from the box, and unfolds the dress from its tissue, and takes her time over her hair and her shoes and the all-important choosing of a hat. She double and triple-checks her coordinates as she hurtles through the Vortex, through the light-years and the centuries. And at last, when the time is right, she lands.

Romana steps out of her TARDIS doors onto an avenue of fountains in an immense garden, and walks through the trees and flowers wrapped in a love song made of silk towards the man at the end of the avenue with his nose in the orange blossoms. He pretends, with practiced falsity, that he had in no way anticipated her coming. They both of them know better.

He does not turn as her heels click on the cobblestones. This will only be one moment in his lives. And it will, if he has anything to say about it, _last_.

"Hello Braxiatel."

And "My Lady," he says, turning, "welcome home."

He offers his arm with a sort of exaggerated gallantry that she would once have felt herself obliged to misinterpret. But her obligations have lifted from her, so much discarded ballast, and now she can fly wheresoever she might choose.

And here she is.

She takes his arm.

“You are inexpressibly lovely this evening,” he says, as they stroll through the orangerie, hidden beneath the trees.

“You would say that,” she says. “You designed the gown.”

“I would say that whatever you happened to be wearing.”

“In that case, why should I have any reason to believe it?”

“Because, my dear Romana, whatever little omissions, obfuscations and tarradiddles I may have found it necessary to perpetuate in the past--not to say outright _fibs_ ,” he bestows upon her a teasing sidelong glance, and she responds with only one raised eyebrow and a not-ungenerous quirk of the lip, “I have never in all my lives told less than the scrupulous truth where beauty was concerned.”

“You say that as though you’re proud of it.”

“Oughtn’t I be?”

“It might be argued that there are more important subjects about which to tell the truth.”

“Such as?”

“Politics, just for example?”

“Politics is the game of lies, my Lady. When politicians tell the truth, they do so with bombs and guns. I prefer to avoid that sort of extremity. I have never tasted a lie so bitter that I did not prefer it to a mouthful of blood.”

“I would have disagreed with that, once,” she says, and leans a little closer to him to avoid a low branch. The blossoms caress her cheek as she passes, bruised petals adding to the scent already filling the air.

“And now?” he asks.

“I’ve just given up politics,” she says, with an aggressive, dark-edged good cheer that does not mask her exhaustion. “That might tell you something about how sick to death I am of blood and lies both.” Her lips tighten. “And I got your... other gift. The recording. That _was_ your doing?”

“Oh yes.”

“And was that ‘scrupulously truthful’ as well?”

“I’m afraid so.”

She gives a tight little nod. “It was... difficult to watch.”

The path branches at their feet. Brax gently guides Romana onto the fork that leads towards the Mansionhouse. “For me as well, I assure you,” he says. “I kept it from you for as long as I could.”

“Need I ask how you got your hands on those predictions in the first place, when the Matrix you took them from no longer exists? Come to that, I don’t recall seeing them when there _was_ a Matrix. I did a certain amount of peeking into the records of my own future. I would have thought I’d have noticed anything so significant.”

“My authorization as Chancellor was sufficient to permit me to do a bit of...excising. As I said, I had hoped that you might be spared the experience of watching that particular set of potential futures. But events had been proceeding ever since you returned to this reality, more rapidly than I had anticipated. I could think of no other equally swift method of persuading you to resign the office, and I couldn’t risk leaving it too long.”

“No,” she agrees. “Not with so many lives at stake.”

“Not with _your_ life at stake,” he corrects.

At one time, she would have avoided the look he is giving her now. Not today. “Mind you,” she says, her lip quirking, “I very nearly didn’t manage it. Resigning was easy enough, but convincing Narvin to accept the Presidency was approximately as easy as swimming from Kasterborous to Mars.”

Brax smiles. “You recruited Leela’s help, I take it.”

“Mmmm,” she agrees. “Not that she was enthusiastic about the idea of President Narvin herself, at first, but I explained as much of it as I could. She came around in the end.”

“And she actually managed to persuade him?”

“‘Wrapped around her little finger’ is an insufficiently emphatic metaphor for the two of them, these days.” Romana’s smile is faraway, sweeter and softer than he has seen on her face in a very long time. “Narvin, a fool for love. Who’d have guessed?”

“The ‘love’ bit is surprising, certainly, but as to the conjunction of ‘Narvin’ and ‘fool’...”

“You weren’t there,” she interrupts, sharply. She refrains from dropping his arm, but the atmosphere grows decidedly cooler. “When we needed Narvin most--when he didn’t have _your_ shadow to lurk in--he proved himself to Leela and me both. More than once. Anyone would be fortunate to earn Leela’s love, but in Narvin’s case, she’s lucky to have him, too.”

“I intended no offense to either of them,” Brax says, excessively careful.

“No,” Romana sighs. “Giving offense isn’t your style.” She glances sideways at him. “They asked me to stay with them, you know.”

“As a Presidential Advisor?”

“ _Me_? Counseling _President Narvin_? We’d kill each other inside a week!”

“I didn’t like to say so, but...” He lets the sentence trail artfully off, and they share the hint of a laugh. She unbends, and slides back towards him.

“No,” she says. “For purely... personal reasons.”

She watches him blink as he struggles to decide whether she can possibly mean what he suspects she might, and whether she could possibly mean anything else. Puzzling Irving Braxiatel, for once in her lives, is _immensely_ satisfying. “But you declined?” he asks.

“I told them I had unfinished business to attend to.”

“And very fortunate that you did,” he says. “You cannot go back.”

“I _cannot_?” Her voice holds a dangerous edge.

He stops, turns to look at her. “You cannot,” he repeats.

“You know something,” she accuses.

“Many things.”

She studies his face, impassive as ever. “You didn’t send me _all_ of the Matrix’s predicted outcomes, did you?”

His mouth tightens. “I sent you the one that would have the greatest impact for you,” he says. “But... not all of them, no. Not those which had the greatest impact for me. They would not have altered your decision.”

“You can’t know that,” she snaps. “It should have been _my_ choice, Brax! Must you _always_...”

“Rassilon is returning, Romana,” says Brax. His eyes have gone hard. “No future is without him. There will be a war, and Rassilon will lead it. The Presidency _will_ pass into his hands.”

“I accept that,” she says. “I wouldn’t have resigned otherwise. But the future you showed me need not necessarily have come to pass quite that way, is that it? The rebellion I led against Rassilon, the followers who died with me--that wasn’t necessary, was it? Were there futures where I handed over power quietly, as Narvin will do? Could I have kept the Presidency that long without getting anyone else killed?”

He hesitates. “Braxiatel?” she says, sharply.

“Anyone _else_ killed?” he asks, finally. “Yes.”

“ _Brax_ \--”

“...But not yourself. You are too powerful and too divisive a figure. He couldn’t have let you live.”

“You can’t know...”

“I _can_ know. Do you know how many of them there were, Romana? How many deaths?”

“How could I, when you...”

“I _watched_ them.” Suddenly Brax is _present_ in a way that could fill a room. His eyes are spellbinding and terrible. “Do you understand, _fully_ understand, the words that I am saying to you? I watched every death that you will never have. I watched the ones where Rassilon had you quietly got out of the way. Those were the ones that happened so quickly that you had no time to hide your fear. That was appalling enough, in its own way. Then there were the public executions--for those, you will be pleased to know, you always kept your chin high, but that did not make them easier to witness. But the ones where he made an _example_ of you...” Romana almost believes that she sees Brax shudder. “Rassilon has spent untold millennia trapped in a nightmare dimension,” he says. “You cannot begin to comprehend the twisted workings of his unhinged mind.”

“But you can?”

“ _I have seen it_.” He does not speak the words with unusual volume, and yet no other verb but ‘bellow’ can capture his intensity. “Do not ask me to describe the things that I have seen, Romana. I watched them, because I could not be certain that this course was the right one unless I was in possession of all the facts. But if you believe that I could watch with equanimity as the woman who is all in all to me was broken and battered and torn apart before my eyes, then you have a far better opinion of my detachment than I merit. Or a far worse opinion of my soul.”

For once, Romana is left with nothing to say. Slowly, carefully, Brax reaches out, and takes both of her hands in his. “Please, my Lady,” says Brax, softly. “If you do not wish to stay here with me, I cannot stop you. But swear to me that you will not return to Gallifrey. Nothing is left for you there but suffering and death.”

She swallows. “Leela and Narvin...”

“Will not be harmed,” Brax promises. “Rassilon will not consider them a threat, at least not at first. The histories show them vanishing from Gallifrey before he can harm them, safely out of his reach. I have already repaired the timescoop. We will save them, Romana.”

Romana bites her lip, unable to decide whether she wants to hold Brax’s gaze or to avoid it. “Very well,” she says. “You have my word that I won’t return to Gallifrey, _if_ you will promise me something in return.”

“You need only ask it.”

“Promise me that from now on, you will stop trying to make choices on my behalf. No more manipulation.” Brax tenses. “No more lies. No more scheming. Not when it’s to do with me.”

“My Lady...”

“No,” she snaps. “Don’t you ‘my Lady’ me. I’m not asking you to surrender every hint of privacy, Brax. I don’t want to know every thought that passes through your head. It amuses you to have secrets and to play games--fine. But I am off the board. And don’t you dare make any remarks to the effect of it being difficult to win a game of chess without a queen. If you’re half as good a player as you think you are, you’ll manage without me. Or, shockingly enough, you might even learn to _ask_ for my help when you want it.”

“And would I have it?” he asks her. “If I asked?”

She frowns, but not with anger. “I _want_ us to fight on the same side, Brax,” she says. “I want... I want to stay. If you give me your word, I will believe it. But I need you to give it. I won’t waste my lives in constant second-guessing.”

He leans towards her. “I will always fight on your side, Romana,” he murmurs.

She steps back sharply, releasing his hands. “That wasn’t an answer.”

Brax stops, and clears his throat. He very nearly fiddles with his cuffs, the nearest action to a fidget of which he is capable. “Is it _so_ difficult?” she asks. “Such a stretch to promise that you’ll stop trying to manage my existence?” She steps back towards him, very close now. “You are... quite extraordinary, Braxiatel,” she says, the first true compliment she has ever bestowed upon him. “Is the one thing that I need from you the only thing you can’t do?”

He raises his hand, slowly, and touches her cheek, the backs of his fingernails tracing the line of her jaw. His hand slides back to bury his fingers in her hair, brushing it away from her ear. He cranes his neck down until their faces are side to side, pressed together, his lips hovering just above her ear.

“I could have made you a goddess,” he murmurs.

Her eyes flutter shut, and her hands press against his chest, over his hearts. His free arm wraps around her, hugging her close. “And if that was what I wanted, I would have asked,” she says. “What I want to be, I can be in my own right, in my own time. If I have anything that might be called a ‘destiny,’ I can and shall forge it for myself. There is only one thing I want you to _make_ me, Braxiatel.”

“Yes?”

She leans back, so she can look him in the eye. “Happy,” she says. “I think you might make a very creditable show of that.”

“I should like very much to try.”

His nose is already brushing hers. She pushes him away, steps back. “ _Your word_ , Braxiatel,” she orders. Her eyes are blazing, but the set of her mouth is less straightforward--resolute and vulnerable, unyielding yet very nearly desperate. “No more lies, no more manipulations, no more schemes. _Promise me._ ”

There is a long silence. “You drive a hard bargain, my Lady,” he says. And he and she both know that it is not the same as ‘yes.’

She turns away from him, her eyes and her lips compressing. She refuses to let the pain show in the set of her shoulders. Not where he can see it. She takes one heavy step away from him, and then another, the dress he gave her caressing her legs as she goes. Such lovely words to wrap her in, and true, she does not doubt it, and yet what good are any truths that come from him? It only takes one rotten apple for the barrel to go sour, and if even he will not vouch for his own honesty, then how can she ever hope to trust him?

“Romana.”

She does not mean to stop. Some part of her despises the rest for yielding to his summons. But it is not the simple fact of his calling her name that compels her to turn. It is the entirely new emotion in his voice. Impossible for Braxiatel, and yet it seems to be...

Doubt?

It is on his face, too. “You are asking a leopard to calmly relinquish its spots,” he says, his voice tight and strained.

She watches him closely. “A panther, I always thought,” she says.

“I’m sorry?”

“Beautiful creatures,” she says, with something like reverence. “So dark and sleek. I’ve wanted one from the first moment I saw them. And you know, not _such_ an impractical pet, when it comes down to it. Your enemies are likely to think quite a lot more than twice about starting any trouble if you’ve got a panther waiting for them in the garden.”

“True enough,” he says, though clearly uncertain of her point.

She nods. “But the problem would be the temptation, you see. To forget that this is something deadly. To treat it like an overgrown housecat. Because no matter how much one might like the idea of such a magnificent animal rubbing up against one’s hand and twining around one’s ankles, a panther is _all_ spot, and cannot change. And however tempting it might be to allow it into the house, to sleep at the foot of one’s bed,” Brax’s eyes darken by a fraction, as her full meaning dawns, “there would inevitably come the morning when one awoke to see the creature with its teeth full of one’s own throat, and one should have no one but oneself to blame.”

“And this is your concern?” he asks. “For the safety of your throat in the proximity of my teeth?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head as she begins walking back toward him with deliberate, steady steps. “My concern _was_ that I was President of Gallifrey. It was all very well allowing you to chase enemies out of the garden, but the bed I was sleeping in wasn’t my own. It wouldn’t have been responsible to leave blood all over the sheets.”

“And now?”

“Now,” she says, “it _is_ my throat, and I may do with it whatever I like.” She stops, so close that she has to turn her chin up to meet his eyes. “And I have teeth and claws of my own,” she says, her voice darkening as his eyes do, “and I am not afraid of you.”

She has never seen him look at her like _that_. He has always watched her, often with considerable intensity, but nothing that began to compare to this. He steps forward and she back in perfect synchronicity--not a retreat, but drawing him on, as though something in their chests had bound them together by a very short chain. She paces back and back, he on and on, until her back thumps against the trunk of an orange tree, shocking a gasp from her. Braxiatel’s hands move with snakelike quickness to pin her there, his palms against the bark--one beside her hip, the other her neck--and the closeness of his body, the burning of his eyes, makes it difficult for her to regain even enough breath for the two words she has to say.

“Promise, Brax.”

Coming from any man less articulate than Irving Braxiatel--that is, _any_ other man but Irving Braxiatel--his groan would not be nearly so affecting. He buries his face in her neck, making her gasp all over again. Her resolve weakens for a fraction of a nanospan, and then returns with reinforcements. She takes his face in her hands and lifts it, turning it towards her.

“I see you for what you are, and I have no desire to tame you,” she says, aching to make him understand, “but no more will I let you tame me. Neither of us would like me anymore if you did. I don’t want to control you, but I cannot sit back and allow you to control me. I want to belong _with_ you, but I cannot belong _to_ you. And if you keep trying to stop me from choosing my own life, then how can I ever choose you?” She tightens her arms around him, tightens her fingers in his hair, wills him to respond with every bit of determination she possesses. “No more games, Braxiatel. _Please_.”

He swallows, and licks his lips. She watches him gathering himself together, sorting and organizing his thoughts. “If I gave you my word that I would try,” he says, very carefully, “if I said that I cannot help seeing you as I see you, and thinking of you as I think of you, and envisioning futures, but that I would sincerely attempt to... to advise, rather than guiding, to be more open with my intentions--if I were to tell you that the game of chess is always playing itself in my mind, and that I cannot topple my king without ceasing to be myself, not even for you, but that I will do my utmost to avoid thinking of you as a piece to be maneuvered and to consider you instead as a fellow intellect to be consulted as to the next move...”

He stops, takes a breath. “I am endeavoring to be as open as I know how, Romana. I could lie to make all of this sound simple, and I hope that you will appreciate the fact that have chosen otherwise. I do not... see the universe in straightforward terms. At times I... have difficulty acknowledging the importance of a present moment. I am used to seeing in four dimensions. And when I look at you, and see your futures, spinning out from everything that you are, the corruscating golden brightness of them, it is never intended with any disrespect to your own free will. When I take you by the hand and step with you, it is only because the music that I hear in you is so _clear_ , and if perhaps I take it upon myself to lead in the waltz, it is only because I am certain that the dance was one you yourself decided upon, and that I am guiding you in the direction of your own choosing.

“But where I fail at times, and I will admit it, is in neglecting to ask whether you would care to dance at all, or to confirm, explicitly, that the steps I am taking are in fact yours. And I will gladly give you my word that I will strive to ask more, and to assume less. I am perhaps overly attached, as a rule, to the grand reveal, to the drama of uncovering that which has been concealed--but I would rather give that up than sacrifice you. I can promise you that I will never tell you lies. And I can pledge that I will make a most sincere attempt to tell you truths, even those which by my instinct I would have kept to myself.

“That is what I feel I can, without exaggeration, offer you. I cannot give you my word that I will be another man than I am. But I can attempt, when I look at you--not to cease to see the _potential_ within you, those exquisite, infinite _possibilities_ that so define you in my eyes--but to make a very conscious effort to see also the woman that you are, now, as you are now. To live within the moment, for your sake. Because the person you are, as you are,” he touches her cheek, “is no less beautiful to me.”

Bad enough that he can ever leave her speechless. But twice in one day is taking things entirely too far. “If the answer is no, I will understand,” he says, and strokes his thumb along her cheekbone, “but will those promises suffice?”

She looks into his eyes. “Well,” she says, trying not to whisper and very nearly succeeding, “it’s a start.”

She is the one who moves. With how absolutely close they already are, the distinction is not particularly meaningful, but Romana makes it in any event. She is the one who presses forward, and then any and all distinctions pass away. She has waited to kiss Brax for so _long_ , and those years must be what passes between their lips that makes this kiss so endless in its sweetness, so entirely removed from time.

Of course the _next_ kiss is entirely Brax’s doing, but by then Romana feels sufficiently magnanimous not to begrudge him in the slightest.

She cannot honestly say how many kisses later they finally surface. She only knows that one moment his smile is on her mouth, and some moments later it is in front of her eyes, making her feel thoroughly undone. “Your hair is full of orange blossoms,” she says, for want of anything better.

“I seem to have ruined your hat,” he replies, pulling a sad smashed mess of straw and ribbons from its place wedged between Romana’s back and the tree.

“Ah well,” she says, as he pockets the remnants and tugs a piece of straw out of her hair. “It died in a noble cause.”

“Nevertheless,” he says, stepping back and holding out his arm to her, “I feel I’ve been a deplorable host thus far. Here you are, only just arrived, and not only have I failed to offer you any refreshments or a tour of the planetoid, but now I must add property damage to the list of my discourtesies. Do at least let me show you to your rooms and let you settle in.”

She bites her lip over a smile, and instead of taking his arm, threads her fingers through those of his outstretched hand. “You _did_ have this well-planned, didn’t you?” she asks, teasing. “A set of rooms all ready and waiting for me?”

“You misunderstand,” he says, as they regain the path. “There has been a set of rooms designed particularly for you and kept in perpetual readiness since the Mansionhouse was built.”

She looks over at him, and this time she cannot help smiling, and laughing as well. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” she says.

“Of course,” he says, and she hears the effort in the words, as he means her to, “you must feel free to make them entirely your own. If there is anything about them you would like changed, you need only say the word.”

“These rooms wouldn’t just _happen_ to be just next-door to yours, would they?”

“On the contrary. Directly the opposite side of the house.”

“Hmmm,” she says, “in that case, it’s as well you made the offer.”

“Yes?”

“Yes,” she agrees. “I don’t believe they’re going to suit me in the slightest.”

Brax makes a face like a cat with cream. It shouldn’t be half so delightful. “You say that,” he says, “but you haven’t seen your closet yet.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm,” he agrees. “Let me put it this way. KS-159 has a diameter of about ten miles. If the Mansionhouse were not dimensionally transcendental, your new wardrobe would take up... oh, about half the planetoid, I should think.”

“That _doesn’t_ surprise me,” she says. “I mean...” She gestures up and down her own body. “Clearly my fashion choices are an item of interest for you.”

“You wore it,” he says, warmly. “I wasn’t certain that you would.”

“It seemed only polite.” She hesitates for a moment. “Did you mean it?” she asks, glancing down at the words that cover her, a hundred honeyed phrases and ardent protestations of devotion.

He slides an arm around her waist, tracing a verse across her hip. “Every word.”

“Well,” she says, “I have spent the past several decades in possession of a more than adequate stock of very fine clothes... and quite alone. I know which means more to me. I would still rather spend my time on your side of the Mansion, even if it requires going absolutely stark.”

If Brax still had his moustache, Romana would be tempted to say that he had choked on it. As it is, he tightens his fingers suddenly around her waist, and clears his throat overloudly, and when he opens his mouth, all that emerges is a rather strained, “Ah. Yes. I... find that a difficult statement to argue with, somehow.”

“Congratulations, Braxiatel,” she says, grinning mischievously and whirling around to face him. “That may be the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a spontaneous reaction from you. I believe you have just achieved your goal of ‘living in the moment.’ I would suggest getting used to it.”

“My dear Romana,” he says, catching her in his arms and pulling her in close, “I entirely intend to.”


End file.
